SPLEEN is the personal blog of Stephen Judd

Fantastic background pieces on the East Coast from Reading the Maps

Great writeups of a very recent trip up to the East Coast in this post:

There was huge anger about police actions in Tuhoe Country, and Bay of Plenty rags like the Whakatane Beacon - hardly bastions of radicalism, I can tell you - were openly scornful of claims in some of the big city media that a 'Te Qaeda' cell was operating in the Ureweras.

News reports had named Taneatua Squash Club as the headquarters of the police operation, and as we approached the squat concrete building I counted eleven white and blue cars and vans in its carpark. We stopped to take a photo out the window: a cop burst through the front door and ran towards us, waving his fist and swearing.